Ratatouille is a classic dish of Provençal cuisine, known for its colorful vegetables and richly flavored sauce. Here is a recipe that highlights vegetables arranged in thin slices, offering an appearance as beautiful as it is delicious.

Ingredients

• 2 red tomatoes
• 2 yellow tomatoes
• 2 small zucchinis
• 2 small eggplants
• 400 ml of tomato sauce (preferably homemade with onion, garlic, Provence herbs, salt, and pepper)
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• Provence herbs or fresh thyme

Instructions

1. Prepare the vegetables: Wash all the vegetables. Trim the ends of the zucchinis and eggplants. Slice the tomatoes, zucchinis, and eggplants into approximately 2 mm thick rounds. Try to keep the size of the slices uniform for even cooking.
2. Assemble: Take a round baking dish or an oven-safe pan. Pour the tomato sauce into the bottom of the dish and spread it out evenly. Start arranging the slices of vegetables upright, alternating them (red tomato, zucchini, eggplant, yellow tomato) in a concentric circle from the edge to the center. Continue until the dish is beautifully filled.
3. Seasoning: Preheat your oven to 190°C (375°F). Drizzle the vegetables with a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and Provence herbs or fresh thyme. Cover the dish with aluminum foil.
4. Bake: Bake the covered ratatouille for about 40 minutes. Then, remove the foil and continue baking for an additional 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender and slightly caramelized on top.
5. Serving: Let it rest for a few minutes before serving. This ratatouille can be served both hot and cold, as a side dish or as a vegetarian main course.

For an even more gourmet touch, you can sprinkle grated Parmesan over the top before the final phase of baking without the foil, to get a nice golden crust.

Enjoy your meal!

Hosting Thanksgiving is no simple feat. If you’ve entertained Thanksgiving meals before, you know that it can take tons of planning. You make your invites, get your RSVP list, reserve your turkey, and plan your décor weeks before (that’s just the beginning!). In the days leading up to the feast, it is all about planning your menu, picking up groceries, and getting down to business in the kitchen. Don’t get us wrong–it’s a joy to plan a Thanksgiving event, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a lot of work. And that’s why Stokes is here to help all the excited hosts out there—whether you are a rookie or a seasonal expert! This week, we’ve got great menu ideas that are sure to wow your guests and help you host the best Thanksgiving yet!

In the mood to stray away from the classic mash, the traditional beans or roasted rainbow carrots? Thanksgiving side dishes should be exceptional, especially plated next to a turkey, and when it makes its big debut, you want to make sure you have the right accompaniments to do it justice! This Thanksgiving, trying something new is in, and we have just the things to impress your guests (and their palates). While your turkey has been slowly roasting to perfection, you have the perfect opportunity to give it the side dishes it deserves. Our recipes are anything but ordinary, and they’ve been devised especially for you by blogger, dietitian and recipe developer Caroline Doucet of the blog Unsweetened Caroline. Her Pumpkin Risotto and Roasted Spiralized Vegetables will play the perfect supporting role to your quintessential main. In addition to being something new and different for you and your guests to try, pumpkin, and the wide variety of vegetables Caroline spiralizes (such as beets, parsnips, rutabaga and squash) are filled with more nutrients, such as fiber, magnesium, potassium and vitamin C, that your classic white potato mash is lacking. So on top of breaking out of our comfort zones, we’re benefiting from these delicious new side dishes. What’s not to love about that? Better tasting and better for you, these recipes will have you well on your way to delicious and nutritious new side dishes for your Thanksgiving meal.

For this recipe, you need a casserole dish—and not just any! Caroline uses the Remy Olivier Oval Cast Iron Casserole for this mouth-watering creation. It’s designed specifically with cast iron to enhance slow-cooking and it ensures even heat distribution to cook your food uniformly. The textured lid allows your meal to remain extremely moist, as well as makes sure flavours are well distributed. For best results, you’ll want to cook with this impeccable and stylish casserole! What’s more, it’s chic enough to bring from the oven to the table (but make sure you have a trivet to absorb the heat and protect your table!) which will thrill the guests who are guaranteed to want seconds.

So, dot the I’s and cross the T’s on your best Thanksgiving menu yet, throw on your apron, and let’s get cooking!

Here to help you make every mouthful of Thanksgiving a delight,

Caroline is the photographer, writer and recipe developer behind Unsweetened Caroline, a food blog that features healthy, sugar-free recipes. In addition to being sugar-free, most of her recipes are vegetarian and can be made allergy-friendly. She created Unsweetened Caroline when recovering from a sugar addiction, in hopes of inspiring others. When she’s not cooking, she’s either hiking, practicing yoga or dreaming about new recipes.

Caroline is a soon-to-be dietitian living in Saint John, New Brunswick. You can follow her on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or on her blog for more recipes!

This New Year satisfy your taste buds, be inspired, and get healthy with these innovative and creative developments in the cooking and food world!

Bowls are the new plate!

Bowls, a more casual and easy way to assemble and enjoy our meals. There’s no denying it with popular trends from the past couple of years that Acai bowls and Buddha bowls are taking up permanent residence on restaurant menus, in our kitchens, and with upcoming trends such as the Poke Bowl and Smoothie bowl creating buzz. Bowls are becoming a regular staple not only in nutrition and health guru diets, but with everyday foodies who are simply looking to try something new and delicious! All you need to do is make sure you have a big enough bowl!   And we have lots of them with whimsical patterns that go perfectly with this playful trend.

Our favorite right now is the Poke Bowl. A traditional Hawaiian dish which consists of fresh raw fish, shredded veggies, edamame beans, avocado, sesame seeds and soy sauce… it is refreshing and healthy. Sushi lovers rejoice: Poke bowls have all the tastiness of your favorite Asian style meal without the heavy carb-filled rice. Check out the poke bowl recipe next week we are doing in collaboration with one of our favorite food bloggers!

Hello alternative pasta options!

A creative way to bring flavor and innovation to a classic staple in our North American diets is using alternatives to pasta.  Chefs and home-cooks alike are swapping out doughy noodles for more nutrition enriched alternatives. Whether it’s trying out vegetable replacements, or using a blender to infuse pasta dough with pureed veggies, or sticking with carb based alternatives  like quinoa, chickpeas, lentils, barley or chia seeds that offer us more nutrition, pasta lovers are looking to add a healthy and palatable twist to their experience.

One of the easiest ways to try this one out is to spiralize some zucchini! Once, you have the ribbon all you need to do is cook it up in a bit of oil for 5 min and you can season it however you want! Check out how we tried out this trend with our Asparagus and Feta Tagliatelle recipe – with a healthy twist!

Vegetable Revolution

We’ve started giving our vegetables the time and attention they’ve always deserved! Vegetables have taken over the plate. Food bloggers and amateur home cooks play an important role in this trend by getting more creative and innovating the way we prepare our veggies. Their recipes prove vegetables can be the main part of our meal, taste great, and satisfy our appetite. This year, the experimentation that we’ve been doing with adding vegetables to meals and recipes they are not traditionally included in will become common practice and restaurateurs will be incorporating these ideas into their menus.

Whether it’s a sweet potato patty in your burger, replacing pasta and noodles with spaghetti squash, or adding kale or spinach into your morning smoothie, no meal will be considered complete without a vegetable making an appearance! So get out your mandoline, food processor or juicer  and join the revolution! Try out our Green Juice and our Post Work Out juice recipes!

Serious Snacking

Eating smaller and more frequent meals is becoming more habitual for the average person, and we’re not talking about the snacks we had as kids, or the late night covert trips to the fridge. From foodies to your average Joe or Jane, the way people want to eat is changing. We want to be able to try new things, taste more and have variety without overdoing it. Sharing appetizers, ordering Tapas, and charcuterie boards are ways that this trend materializes. What’s more is that there may well be some nutritional perks to this new form snacking! At all times of day, dehydrated or baked vegetables, rather than oily chips, and exotic dried fruit for sweet offer us new tastes from around the world and are healthier!

For an example of how you can prepare yourself a healthy snack at home, check out our veggie chips recipe on our blog.

Craving Authentic Cuisine

In North America, we are a melee of cultures and this has always been reflected in our food! After years of combining, mixing, sharing and borrowing from here and there to invent our own fusion creations, there is a turn towards more traditional takes on the recipes from our roots.  Whether it be genuine Korean Bashan, or “new-ish jew-ish cuisine”, third and fourth generation chefs are looking back to their heritage for inspiration, and we love the authenticity of it.

Check out our blog for authentic cuisine from Spain, a Catalan Fideua dish which is similar to paella, and a traditional pork dish from Vietnam, a THIT Kho Trung recipe.

Keeping you up to date in all the latest cooking innovations and food trends,

By making your own veggie chips you can choose which vegetables and seasoning to use. It doesn’t take long and they are quite simple to make once you have the right equipment. Slicing the vegetables becomes a really easy task thanks to a mandolin, also be sure to use a peeler to remove the skin. It’s also a little bit easier if you have a wire rack that can be placed on your baking sheet because then you won’t need to flip the chips over halfway through cooking. You also need a cooling rack to place your chips once they are baked.

These recipes are just to cook the chips but you can add any seasoning you want. You can pretty much use any type of vegetable for this recipe; we suggest trying eggplant, zucchini, and carrots! Seasoning suggestions are salt, pepper, paprika and rosemary … etc.

Beet: Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Wash 2 medium sized beets and slice as thin as possible on mandolin. In a mixing bowl, toss them with 1½ tbsp and seasoning of choice to evenly coat, then bake in the oven on the middle rack for 30-35 minutes; don’t forget without a wire rack check to flip them over after about 15 minutes. Once they are done baking, let them cool before tasting. Beets are a great source of nutrients and fiber; they help fight inflammation, lower blood pressure, have anti-cancer properties and boost your stamina.

Taro Chips – heat oven to 400 degrees
Taro Root is not the most common vegetable, but they taste great as a crisped chip and are a great source of Vitamin C and Potassium. Taro root works better if you peel the skin off, and slice them as thinly as possible. Once again, toss 1 sliced taro root with 1½ tablespoons olive oil and any other seasoning you wish to add. Place the slices on a baking sheet, they can be touching but make sure they do not overlap. Bake them for 12 minutes before flipping them over for another 12 minutes. Give them about 3 more minutes to cool down and crisp a little bit more before eating. Be sure to watch them carefully so they don’t burn.

Sweet Potato: heat oven to 450 degrees
Sweet potatoes are great when baked and even better when turned into a healthy alternative snack choice! They are high in potassium, dietary fiber and Vitamin A and have countless health benefits. It’s the same steps as the other two but this one cook 2 medium sized potatoes, thinly sliced, on a higher temperature (450) and start with 10 minutes on one side before flipping them over for another 10. You want to pull them out when they are crunchy on the edges but tender in the middle.

You might have to wait a bit longer for some of them to fully crisp as every oven is different. A good trick if you have the time is to cook for the specified amount of time, then turn off the oven but keep your chips in there for about an hour. Because these chips are sliced so thinly they can burn very quickly or if they’re not thin enough they won’t crisp or just take longer. A lot can go wrong so don’t be disappointment if it doesn’t come out perfectly your first try, it takes some practice!

• Frying Pan
• Tongs
• Knife
• Cutting Board
• Pot
• Strainer

Directions

Boil water in a pot, once it is ready add pasta. Cook until soft. While pasta is cooking, cut the peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, green onions and mince the garlic.

When done cutting, combine all ingredients into frying pan except wine, pasta and parsley. Sauté until the vegetables are soft. Once they are soft, add the wine.

Once the pasta is finished cooking, strain it and add it to the frying pan. Mix it around and then finish with the parsley.

Top it off with some Parmesan cheese and fresh ground pepper to taste!

Bon appetit!

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